[Editor’s note: This article contains spoilers for “Squid Game” Season 3, including the finale.]
Within the last episode of “Squid Sport,” Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) utters the phrases “People are…” That incomplete sentence, that subject-verb mixture that types each the episode title and the present’s core questions lingers all through the finale, and past. Are they good? Dangerous? Grasping? Selfless? All of it, none of it — and all the things in between.
As famous in IndieWire’s spoiler-free evaluate of the season, “Squid Sport” principally ends precisely the way you’d anticipate. Viewers who really feel disenchanted as a consequence of an absence of twists and turns might need to take into account what drew them to the present within the first place, and what it ever did to recommend an alternate denouement. This can be a present that not solely killed off most characters within the first season, however primarily promised to take action up entrance. What different course was there?
Season 3, Episode 6 opens proper the place its predecessor left off, with Gi-hun and Myung-gi (Im Si-wan) standing on raised platforms excessive above the bottom, processing the data that one in all them or the toddler 222 should die within the subsequent spherical. The newborn getting into the competitors strained “Squid Sport” credulity, however solely so far as it additionally pushed the characters’ ethical boundaries.
After probably the quickest delivery in human historical past, Jun-hee’s (Jo Yuri) baby is compelled to take her place within the video games, which anybody with an oz of empathy would clearly reject. The common viewer’s thoughts will outright reject it — so, after all, the cartoonishly evil VIPs lap it up. Different gamers and guards indulge the perverse twist too rapidly, however that works as an extension of the “Squid Sport” worldview: Cash makes folks do unthinkable issues, and it coaxes doubtful witnesses into compliance (particularly when dissent equals dying).
All this to say: Method too many individuals had been rooting for that child to die within the last sport, however it clearly ratcheted up the stakes for a present that usually dangers desensitizing viewers to deadly violence. After Myung-gi’s shallow try to guard Gi-hun and the newborn, he wastes no time turning on them each. In a season full of impeccable performances, Im isn’t any exception in a last scene that lays out his character’s untold depths in addition to his biggest disappointment: wanting so badly to do the suitable factor, however figuring out he’ll fail earlier than he even tries.
He didn’t need to harm his personal child — however knew earlier than even hitting the crimson button that when the second got here, he may do it.
Myung-gi — and lots of others, most likely — just isn’t able to what Gi-hun does when the ultimate sport commences in earnest. Gi-hun summons his braveness and spirit in his last moments, defending his values whilst his mission decisively fails. He provides his life to avoid wasting one other, which is perhaps the final vestige of the outdated Gi-hun who entered the video games in Season 1. That man was clumsier, much less world-weary, even smiled every so often — and he cared a hell of lots for the folks round him.
Lee provides it his all as typical, however with Gi-hun gone on the midpoint, the episode provides technique to his very good costars; Lee Byung-hun because the Entrance Man, Wi Ha-jun as his brother Jun-ho, Park Gyu-young as No-eul. There’s barely any dialogue within the final moments of the sport, however all of them convey worlds of emotion with their eyes and physique language, elevating the sort of philosophical character questions followers can fervently interrogate for years to come back.
And as bleak and tragic as Gi-hun’s dying is, it’s adopted by the sort of pinpricks of hope (“bursts of sunshine”) that make life value dwelling in a capitalist hellscape. Six months later, Na-yeon is cancer-free, No-eul may discover her daughter, the mom and brother of Sae-byeok from Season 1 (HoYeon Jung) lastly reunite, and the kids of Gi-hun and Jun-hee can have higher lives after their mother and father’ sacrifices.
It’s not a sophisticated takeaway: We do what we do — endure, fail, persist, persevere — for love. What sort of world places a literal worth on love, on life? Love’s victories, nonetheless uncommon, poke by way of the grisly dread of of “Squid Sport,” by no means cloying, however downright poignant. The video games will discover a technique to proceed, however the gamers and those that survive them will attempt to mitigate one another’s ache. That’s all we are able to do, and we’ll preserve doing it.
“Squid Sport” is now streaming on Netflix.